


Language of the Common Weed

by eloquated



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory reimagining, F/M, Gen, Slightly To The Left Of Canon, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 15:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16684417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquated/pseuds/eloquated
Summary: The Moriarty twins had always been a little strange.  Different from the other children in their small neighbourhood.  They were going to make something of themselves.From working-class Belfast, to a hospital rooftop in London, this is their story.





	Language of the Common Weed

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all you darlings!
> 
> I've been working on this for what seems like forever, and I really hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Just as a fair warning, there are mentions of the Troubles, and terrorist activities. It's not the main focus of the story, and I've opted not to go into details.. but consider yourself warned.

 

> **i. Bittercress ( _Cardamine_ ); Paternal error**

It was late afternoon, and the twins knew Easter was coming.

The kitchen was small, and the afternoon light spilled through the curtained window over the basin and across the scarred wooden table.  One of Michael’s school books and a handful of pamphlets from the Church were scattered through a triangle made of two empty mugs and the pliers her father had just set down, alongside the slightly battered looking kettle.  “Da?” Molly’s voice was small, even for a nearly four-year-old, and the sunlight caught her hair with the same copper flecks as her mother.

“Molly’m’love, what are you doing up?  I thought your mam put you down for a nap.”  Eamon Moriarty was the sort of man that people remembered.  He was tall and thin, with a fine featured face that had only seemed to get more handsome (at least, according to the ladies he knew) as he got older.  Usually he felt compelled to point out that he wasn’t even 30, so they could keep the ‘older’ to themselves!

To Molly, he was just her da.  The man she adored when he was in a good mood.  On those days, he’d sweep her mother away from the sink while she washed the dishes, spinning her around until she’d start laughing, and he’d kiss her until Molly’s older brother would pretend to be sick.  

On that afternoon he looked the same as he always had; dark hair cropped short at the back, and his black jacket thrown over the back of his chair.  They all wore them, like a de facto uniform, the lads in their worn jeans and black jackets.

“Couldn’t sleep.”  She said with a shrug, her tiny shoulders rising and dropping beneath a tshirt that hung to her knees, and had once belonged to her older brother, “What’re you doing with the kettle?”  With a stubborn curiousity, Molly planted one small foot on the lower rung of her father’s chair, and let him scoop her up into his lap.

“Is that so?  And it wouldn’t have anything to do with you and Jimmy sneaking down last night to watch the late movies?  Just because Michael’s old enough to stay up, doesn’t mean you are.” Eamon burst out laughing at the sulk on his little girl’s face, and ruffled her already messy hair, “Don’t give me that look!  If you didn’t want the punishment, Molly’m’love, you both shouldn’t have gotten caught. Now go on, fetch your twin and bring him down here. If you’re awake, I’m sure he’s not sleeping, so you might as well get started on your chores.  Your Ma’ll be back from the shops soon, and you want to be done before that.”

Molly looked properly mutinous for a moment, but there was no point fighting with her father.  His word was God, or as good as. Even her mother didn’t argue with him, and she was one of the bravest people Molly knew.  Pick your battles, she’d tell her, pick them well. Her Da’s belt was one Molly always chose not to fight.

So with a huff of defeat, she scrambled down to the floor and nodded, “But Da-  what _are_ you doing with it?”  She asked, trying her luck and pointing at the kettle on the table.

“Nothing you need worry about now.  Maybe if you get your work done, I’ll tell you before I go out tonight.”

He never would tell her, and the next day when the mourners came to pay their respects to her mother, they would realize the kettle was still broken.

 

 

> ****ii. Foxglove (** **_Digitalis purpurea_ ** **); A wish** **

It was the hottest summer on record, and the twins had gotten new shoes for their birthday the week before.  Their mother claimed they were growing like weeds, but they were still shorter than the other kids in their class.

They’d turned eight in the blistering heat of a muggy July.  Shimmering waves rose off the pavement, and every window in every house seemed to have thrown open the sashes to let in whatever hint of a breeze they could.  Molly could feel the sweat trickling down the back of her neck as she ran down the sidewalk, beading on her forehead and threatening to drip into her eyes. Her mother had plaited her hair neatly back that morning, but it was now hopelessly frayed, and even her brother’s tidy side part was in disarray, with fine strands sticking out at wild, sweaty angles.

“Come _on_ , Jimmy, we’re going to be late, and Mam’s going to have our hides!”  Molly called over her shoulder as they hurried along the manicured edge of Queen’s University.  The sun baked red bricks looked brighter against the still-green lawns and ornamental trees, and Molly had to wonder just how many people were employed just to keep the grounds looking as nice as they did.  “Jimmy?”

Molly’s shoes crunched on the sidewalk as she stopped and looked back properly, her brother’s face turned up to the school with a pierced look of longing.   _Oh_.

Well, they were already going to be late for tea, and being an extra minute later wasn’t going to change anything.  

Padding back to her brother, she scrubbed her sleeve across her forehead to blot away the worst of the sweat, leaving a damp smear on her orange tshirt.  They had the same dark eyes and slight builds; a pair of bookends slotted together as Molly leaned against her twin’s side to get his attention.

She understood his longing look all too well.  The university was on the right side of the city, with the right sort of people, according to their mother.  It was beautiful, a red brick bastion of learning against the grey buildings surrounding it-- but it might as well have been the moon, for all they’d ever see the inside of it.

His arm felt sticky and hot against her’s, and Molly was fairly sure her nose was just as singed pink from the long, hot afternoon.  Digging weeds in the Church garden still seemed like an unfairly extreme punishment; all they’d done was ask some questions in Sunday school that their teacher hadn’t liked!  It hadn’t even been meant maliciously; if they’d wanted to be mean, Molly knew, they could have been.

Jim was very good at asking questions that adults didn’t want to answer.

“Come on, we’re already late.”  She reminded him, and nudged his shoulder impatiently with her own, “And I don’t want Mam to make us do the dishes tonight, not when we spent all day at the church!”  Her closeness shook Jim out of his reverie, a few strands of black hair plastered across his forehead when he turned his head to look at his twin.

“One day, I’m going to be so powerful that you could go to whatever University you want.  I’ll have a different house for every day of the week. And we’ll never have to eat tripe again.   Ever.” Jimmy said flatly, his mouth pressed together hard and defiantly thin. Silently he dared his twin to argue with him.  Sometimes she did, even though he knew she wanted it as much as he did. He had a list of things he was going to fix, when he got older.

For both of them.  Five minutes older was still older, and he’d never trusted anyone else to stand up for his sister.  She was _his twin_.  Possessive.  

“One day.  But I’d rather have tripe for dinner than nothing at all, and that’s what we’re going to have if we don’t get on.”  Molly’s skinny arm was hot through his as she pulled him along, finally getting her twin to put one foot in front of the other, “And if we’re any later, Mick’ll eat our share, too.  And we’ll _still_ have to do the dishes!”

 

 

> ****iii. Hyacinth (** **_Hyacinthus_ ** **); Sport, game, play** **

It was nearly Christmas, and the Moriarty twins had decided that their catechism was even more dull than the classes at school.  Stuck in the basement of St. Patrick’s they stuck close to the space heater that had been plugged into the wall; half because the ancient furnace never seemed to warm the room their teacher had chosen, and the other half because it was the furthest point away from the front of the class.  

Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons had been given over to lessons on sin and vice, as soft-voiced Mrs. O’Shea tried to teach a lot of tired seven-to-ten year olds about their future in the Church.  Even Molly could see what a thankless job that was.

The holidays were coming, and they were almost on school break, none of them cared a whit about the difference between mortal and venial sins (although the group of boys at the middle left of the room giggled whenever their teacher had to say it).  They just wanted to throw down their books and escape the clammy church. It had snowed the night before, and making grubby snowballs before it melted sounded like much more fun than sitting through yet another lecture.

“Alright, m’dears… As we all know, Christmas is coming, and I thought it would be a lovely surprise if we all wrote our own story of the nativity!  And we’ll hang them in the front entry for everyone to see when they come in for the Christmas mass.” At her side, she could feel the way her twin seemed to perk up, like he’d been plugged into the mains and given a boost.

It had taken them a week to train their teacher to let them work together, and now the nice lady with the rose pink cardigan barely noticed when the twins bent their heads together to discuss their ‘individual’ assignment.  Upstairs, they could hear the sounds of the choir beginning their practice in earnest, and Molly smiled down at her paper; as much as she didn’t want to be here, the familiar carols were… Nice.

If nothing else, they were a reminder that the holidays were coming.

“What kind of a nativity is it, Molly-mine?”  Jim whispered in her ear, and kicked her ankle beneath the table to get her attention, “I think it’s the sort where the Three Wise Men-”

“You’re going to get us in trouble.”  

“And you’re going to help.”

Across the scarred table top, their dark eyes met with a conspiratorial expression.  The sort that made their mother sigh with wary resignation, and which their school teacher never seemed to notice, much to her detriment.  “Where the Wise Men come to stop the Messiah from being born? That’s _boring_ , Jimmy.”  Molly decided, and inched her chair closer, “Something more exciting needs to happen.  Something with…”

“More bloody.”  Jim’s mouth curved into a slow, knowing smile, his black eyes alight as he caught his sister’s gaze, “I know what we’ll do.”

Their Mam was furious when she was called in to speak to Father Murray a week later.  Yes, she understood the severity of it. Of course she was trying to do right by her children-- and yes, they were willful, but they were still young.  

No, that wasn’t much of an excuse for writing such a hideous story…

She really wasn’t sure where the idea of The Hungry Donkey had come from.

 

 

> ****iiii. Rye Grass (** **_Lolium perenne_ ** **); Changeable disposition** **

It was three days after his sixteenth birthday, and Michael Moriarty had come home with a black coat and blood on his knuckles.

Everyone in the house knew what it meant, and if the twins were honest (which they were, with each other.  With sidelong glances and matched dark eyes that spoke volumes) they weren’t even that surprised. Michael had always idolized the memory of a father the twins could scarcely remember.

But then, he’d been older when Eamon had died.  And their father, and their grandfather before him, had left their boot marks deep in the Irish mud.  It marked out a clear path, and Michael had chosen to slot his feet into those prints in the hopes that they would guide him.  

“It’s important, Mam, and I’m going to be a part of it!”  

Michael’s voice rose and cracked over their mother’s quieter tones, loud enough that the twins could hear the strained defiance from their bedroom.  Jim lay still in his bed, eyes fixed on a spot on the ceiling where the light had escaped in through an ill-fitting corner of the door frame.

He could hear his sister’s breathing, and measured the cadence of it against his own.  There was no word or warning, (he didn’t need it, and she didn’t need to offer it) when she padded across the room, trailing the edge of her own blanket behind her.

She didn’t need an excuse.  And she didn’t need to tell him it was cold (even though it was, and Jim’s blanket was growing thin where it hadn’t already been patched up).  

In silence, Jim lifted the edge of his quilt and pressed his skinny frame up against the wall.  “Keep your ice feet to yourself!”

“I’ve got socks!” Molly whispered back, and threw her blanket over the two of them.  In the still darkness they tried not to listen to the voices downstairs, or the leaden silence that followed the slam of the door.  Neither of them remembered much about their father, but the sound resonated along their shared heartstrings.

It was a sinking feeling.

Molly’s hair smelled of cheap supermarket shampoo as she pressed in close, the long strands cast across their shared space and curling through her twin’s.  In the dark it didn’t matter if his arms locked around her a little too tight, or if their foreheads came to rest together on the pillow.

It was just the two of them, and nobody else needed to know.

Three days later, Molly came downstairs to find Michael sitting at the kitchen table, the surface strewn with pipe and makeshift caps.   _Oh._

And she didn’t need to ask what they were doing, or why Jim was sitting tight at their brother’s side, watching with rapt attention as he slotted the pieces together.

“Some things are worth fighting for, Molls.  I’ve got to do it, for you both, and Mam. It’s important.”

His next birthday was quiet.  And their mother wouldn’t let the twins go up to Long Kesh to see him.

The H-blocks were no place for children.  And Michael didn’t want his brother and sister to see him jailed.

 

 

> ****v. Purple Lilac (** **_Syringa vulgaris_ ** **); First feelings of love** **

It was the first week of February, and the Moriarty twins were already sick of Valentine’s talk. It had been going on for days already, their classmates giggling and gossiping about the dance that might (or, just as easily, might not.  That was still up to the administration) be thrown at the school. A lot of teens crammed into their Sunday best, lined up on opposite sides of the hall because they were too shy to speak.

It sounded dreadful to Molly, but Jim was entirely certain he could make something interesting happen.

Their room was quiet that afternoon, the two of them sprawled top-to-tail on the squeaking slip of Molly’s bed, their hands joined in the middle.  “Smart. More than smart.” Jim drawled from up at the headboard, his free arm curled under his dark head, “Someone that’s fun.” He added a beat layer, and peeked down to see the grin on his sister’s face.

“Tall.  Completely brilliant.  Fun. Light hair?-”

“Dark.”

“And bright eyes, blue or green or-”

“Both.”

Somehow, it didn’t come as much surprise, they mused, that they had the same idea of their perfect person.  Molly shifted a little and passed Jim’s fingers into her other hand, her skinny frame curled onto the side. With a sigh, she rested her head on her brother’s shins, and shuffled a little until she’d made herself comfortable.  “Boy or girl?” She finally asked, and from her new position, Jim couldn’t see the blush on her cheeks.

Not that he needed to, he thought; he could read her voice as well as his own, “Doesn’t matter to me.  You?” He volleyed back, and squeezed her fingers tight. How similar were they, really? Jim watched her down the length of the bed, fingers flexing like they were testing for a weakness.

“Me either.  Just so long as they’re smart.”

 

 

> ****vi. Trumpet Flower (** **_Brugmansia_ ** **); Separation** **

It was October, and debris scattered the Shankill Road.  

Bits of mortar and plaster crunched under Molly’s feet as she hurried home, skirting the edges of the crowd that had come out in their morbid state to see the destruction.  Whispers rose as the dust settled, but Molly knew better than to linger at the edges of the throng-- news traveled fast in her part of Belfast, and she knew she was already late.

She could still remember the weight of the envelope in her hand as she’d slid it into the mail slot, stamped for London and holding all her crossed fingers and prayers in it.  King’s College, the virtually unattainable goal.

But she’d had to try.  

Now, running home along the edge of the street, Molly felt small and selfish-- what right did she have to dream of some big future outside Belfast when some people, her own family included, were struggling to make ends meet?  Without Michael…

Things had changed after Michael had gone.  The house had grown quiet, their mother retreating into herself as if all her children had been taken, instead of just her oldest.  And in the vacuum silence, Molly and Jim had learned to lean on each other, as they’d always done.

She wouldn’t - _couldn’t_ \- have applied without his blessing.

_“Of course you’re going to go.  What else could you do? Stay here until your brains rot?  Meet a nice Catholic boy and give him a dozen babies you can’t feed, while he works for pennies on the dockside?  Don’t be an idiot, Molly mine, you’re going!”_

She felt homesick already, her stomach churning ever since she’d signed the application with her mother’s maiden name.  She loved her family, but this was her chance to escape out from under her name; no more Margaret Moriarty, sister of the fellow that’d died, with the brother serving years in Long Kesh.  

Nobody knew Molly Hooper.  

With her heart in her throat, Molly pushed passed the edge of the crowd and put their whispers out of her head.  The future was all well and good, but she had to get home.

Jim would be waiting, and worried sick.

 

 

> ****vii. Trefoil, Birdsfoot (** **_Lotus corniculatus_ ** **); Revenge** **

It was June, and Jim hadn’t seen his sister in almost a year.

He’d wanted to be home at Christmas, but _things_ hadn’t gone quite to plan, and he’d ended up spending the whole of it in bloody _Aberdeen,_ being frozen by the wind off the North Sea.  Heads had rolled for it, but it hadn’t been enough to soothe the bite of homesickness that had gnawed away at him.  

He’d even found himself slowing his steps outside St Mary’s, listening to the strains of ‘O Holy Night’ from the Christmas Eve mass.  His Mam had tried not to sound too disappointed when he’d called, but with Michael in the H Blocks, it must have been a quiet year with just her and Molly.

But that was then, and now the early summer heat had lured the students from King’s College out onto the tidy green lawn-- studying seemed to take some interesting forms, here.  Jim smirked to himself as he loosely tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, feeling sleek and successful. Westwood and Gucci, still stiff with newness, but he was already learning to wear it like a second skin.   

At sixteen he’d accomplished more than most of these students would in their whole limited little lifetimes.  They were the rats he scattered crumbs for, just to see which ones would consume their brothers. Luckily for them, Jim had no interest in their petty little lives, he had eyes for only one face in the crowd.

Unfortunately, it seemed that _someone_ hadn’t gotten the message.  Turning a corner along the lined path, Jim caught sight of the tall, leanly muscled man veering across the grass towards his sister.  Flanked by a pair of witless goons, (and Jim was becoming something of an expert in those) the man had a gym bag looped over his shoulder.  Even from a distance, Jim could see the wet patches under his arms, and the damp V between his shoulders where his hair had dripped.

With her back to her brother, Jim couldn’t see Molly’s face; but then, from the subtle tension of her shoulders beneath that hideous blue and orange sweater, he didn’t need to.  He knew his twin, from the top of her dark, ponytailed head to the worn sneakers, and the bag clutched across her chest like a shield. Someone was bullying his sister, and she hadn’t _told him_.  Clearly he’d picked the right weekend to come up to London to surprise her.

“Molly the Mick.  Crawled out of your crypt?  I thought you’d finally gotten the message and gone back to Ireland.  When are you going to get the hint that we don’t want your kind here? Just because you got in here, with the _quality,_ doesn’t mean you are.”  The man drawled, his whole expression filled with a bully’s glee as Molly tried to shrink back against the red brick wall.  At his sides the brainless lackeys guffawed loudly, even though Jim was fairly sure they hadn’t properly understood more than a few connecting words.

He wanted to grab them both by the hair and bash their empty heads together like egg shells; over and over until the sad bits of desiccated grey matter drifted to the cobbled walkway.  

No.  Correction, he chided himself-- he wanted to _watch_ their heads driven together.  Well, he had been looking for an excuse to hire a little muscle of his own, clearly providence had smiled down on him that afternoon.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t especially helpful in the short term, and Jim shelved the thought for later. Currently, he had the lead idiot to sort out.

“Carl, I’ve told you--”  Molly’s voice was small, wavering as she addressed the idiot that had her hemmed up against the wall.  Gone were the soft, lilting syllables and the lovely, liquid roll of her R’s, in the last ten months it sounded like Molly had gone to war against her own accent, and the audible proof of it -- and the damnation -- he lay squarely at this _Carl’s_ feet.  Dealing with that waste of skin would be both a pleasure, and a belated Christmas gift for his dear sister.

How productive this trip was turning out to be.

With every breath _Carl_ took, Jim could feel the sizzling rage burning up his throat, as bright and flaring as the sparklers on a birthday cake.  “ _Dia dhuit_ , Molly mine… You really must introduce me to your friend.”

 

 

> ****viii. Maidenhair Fern (** **_Adiantum_ ** **); Discretion, secrecy** **

It was always cold in the morgue, but with an extra sweater, Molly didn’t mind the chill.  It was a point of pride that she’d made it here at all, rising through the ranks of her peers.  And finally, she had both the paper, and the position, to prove to herself that you didn’t have to be wealthy and privileged to succeed.

She didn’t even care that it was in a field most people didn’t want to enter.  This time, she’d promised herself, she was going to be proud of what she’d accomplished.

“I’n Dublin’s fair cityyy.. Where the girls are so prettyyy… I once met a girl name sweet Molly Malone--”  Jim’s warbling tenor drowned out the music Molly had been listening to, bright and familiarly off-key. Half a second later the door swung open and revealed the man himself; decked out in the sort of suit that probably cost as much as her scholarship.

He was doing well for himself, and Molly’s heart warmed through for the sight of it.

“Jimmy!”  She blurted, and cut off the end of his song when she hopped to her feet and caught her twin around the neck, “What’re you doing here?  I thought you were in Zurich this week!”

For business, of course.  It seemed like that was the only reason her twin did anything, anymore.

But his arms were the same, and the way they gathered her in hard against his chest.  She could feel his shared heartbeat against her own, falling into sync as they always did after an extended time apart. Three weeks was too long, and she intended to remind him of that!  After.

“And miss your-”

“Our-”

“Birthday?  You wound me, Molly mine!  But while I’m here…”

“Work?”  Molly asked into his shoulder, and felt the way his body tensed with a brief shudder of suppressed amusement.  Another body to process through the morgue. Or another box of contraband to hide amidst the boxes of spare sutures.  She felt, more than heard, the way he nodded.

“You’re the only one I trust.”

It was was all becoming too easy.  And Jim was right.

Nobody looked twice at the girl in the morgue.

 

 

> ****viiii. Citron (** **_Citrus medica_ ** **); Ill-beauty, sadness** **

It was Christmas Eve, and Molly had tried on so many dresses that she’d lost count.  There were festive red ones, holly berry bright, that brought out the auburn tones of her dark hair, and the blotchiness of her skin that only seemed to grow more obvious as the afternoon ticked by.  

Red, then, was out.

There was every shade of blue imaginable, and most of them Meena struck off as unflattering.  Not Christmassy enough. Just plain too … plain. And the more Molly looked at them, she thought, yes-- of course they were, and how lucky she was to have a friend like Meena to point those things out to her.  Jewel toned green and purples were closer to the mark, and black was always universally flattering, wasn’t it?

After a dozen dresses in half a dozen shops, Meena had looked at her with token sympathy to cover her annoyance, “Molls, you’ll be _fine_ .  You look _fine_.  Get that black one, slap on some red lipstick, and own it!”  

“But you said-”  Molly felt the telltale tightness at the back of her throat as she forced herself to look into the double high, double wide mirror that curved against the wall.  It felt like a cruel joke, all of her staring back at herself; too flat across the chest and too lumpy in the thighs, an unflattering combination that just seemed accentuated by the figure hugging black dress.  She didn’t feel like owning it, she felt like pulling her oversized jumper back over her head, and hiding in the corner of her flat for the rest of the night.

Preferably in bed with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate.  She wanted to call her mam and ask for her advice, because God knew Molly was in over her head.  Molly had caught Meena tsk’ing away a few times that afternoon, muttering to herself that there were so many things her mam _should have_ taught her.  As if Ellen Moriarty hadn’t been focused on keeping her boys out of trouble.

It hadn’t worked, but she’d tried so hard.  And Molly had done her best to help, to stay out of trouble herself.  Besides, good Catholic girls from Belfast didn’t wear some of the dresses Meena had pushed her way.  Not if they didn’t want a _reputation._  

She wanted to call her mam, to tell her about Sherlock, and how he’d swoop into her lab; and she wanted to hear her laugh, and tell Molly that she needed to be brave.  That nobody had the right to push her around like that. Nobody.

“Right, of course… The black one.  You’re right, Meena, it really is the best of the lot.  Why don’t you grab all those bags of yours, and I’ll meet you at the till?”  

Meena hesitated a moment and wrapped her arms around Molly’s small shoulders, “It was always going to be a crap year for you, Molls.  Your mum wouldn’t want you miserable, though. And you did want Sherlock to see you as a woman, not just a brain in a lab coat. So that dress’ll do the trick!  Trust me, he won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

She was right, Molly told herself, fingering the neat rows of festively silver beads across the wide, flat neckline.  And really, probably nobody looked good in front of those huge mirrors; unless you were eighteen with the body to match, and not hurtling towards thirty.  

Once she did her hair and added a little polish, she’d look better than fine.  And she was entirely, mostly sure she had a bra that would work with it. She could be glamorous for one night!

And even Sherlock couldn’t escape the fact that she was a woman in this.

It was a simple plan, but a few hours later, it unraveled spectacularly.

“Oh no no, what are you doing?  This isn’t right!” Molly told her reflection in the bathroom mirror, clutching the skinny little eyeliner pencil in an unsteady hand.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn any makeup at all--

No, she could.  Lipstick. Around Sherlock.  And he’d said it was nice, because then her mouth wasn’t too small.  

Right.

Decisively, Molly dragged the lipstick across her mouth and blotted the excess away with a folded piece of tissue.  There, now she looked better. “All pulled together. I look much better, I’m sure of it. And it’s going to be fine, even if he doesn’t notice…  Oh, who am I trying to fool, of course he’ll notice. He sees _everything_.  Well that’s fine.  Good, even! I just need to be confident.  I’m a grown woman, and I’m allowed to look nice.”

She didn’t believe it as she left the house, her legs itching from the nylon stockings, and her head feeling slightly odd from the unfamiliar weight of her earrings.  But Meena had pointed out that her usual studs would just look silly with a dress like this. Now, so long as she made it there without slipping on the snowy sidewalk, she’d be wonderful.

It was unseasonably cold as she stepped out of the underground station a short while later, fishing with tingling fingers for her ringing mobile phone.  “Jimmy!” For the first time that day, Molly felt a smile come easily, the sound of her twin’s voice on the other end of the line lightening the dead weight on her shoulders, “Happy Christmas!  I’ve wanted to call you all day, but you said you were going to be mad busy. Will I get to see you tomorrow?”

“Happy Christmas, Molly-mine!  I’m always busy, but I’ll try, that make you happy?”  She could hear his laugh on the other end of the line, bright and clear with sharp edges that some people found disconcerting, and Molly just found familiar.  

“Don’t do me any favours! It’s not like you’re my brother, after all. Or that tomorrow is Christmas.” The bags she was carrying were turning her fingers numb, and they tingled when she shifted them to the other hand, her mobile pinched into the space between her shoulder and her ear.

“I know, no rest for the wicked, but do try.  It won’t seem like Christmas without you, and how am I going to give you your present if I don’t see you?”  

By the time she reached the door of 221B, Molly was feeling much more like herself.  Of course she could do this-- how silly it was that she’d let herself get so worked up over a dress!  

It all went spectacularly to Hell almost the moment she opened the door.  And the worst part was that he wasn’t wrong, about any of it.

For just a moment, Molly had let herself believe that maybe she could have that princess moment.  The one where the homely caterpillar becomes something lovely-- of course, it seemed that Molly as a butterfly still had no taste, no common sense even!  What had she been thinking? Showing her off her too-small mouth and virtually non-existent breasts?

Gaudy earrings and everything about her screaming pathetically for attention.

Look at me, I have some value.  

Look at me, I can be pretty, too.  

Look, I’m a real girl.  Please acknowledge that I have some worth as one, even if I don’t know what I’m doing.  Please. _Please_.

It was reductive and pathetic, and when the door of her flat closed behind her hours later, Molly felt the tears finally escape.  “You’re not a princess, Molly Moriarty, you’re the troll that lives under the bridge.” In the reflection on the front of her microwave she looked wretched and distorted, mascara smudged around her eyes, and the once tidy edge of her lipstick smeared on one side.

“Are you?  I’ve never met a troll.  I always thought they’d be taller.”

Molly was never entirely sure how her brother had known to be there that night.  But with a wretched, hiccuping sob she folded into his arms. Jim smelled of spicy cologne, like cardamom and balsam, as she buried her face in his shoulder.  

“Don’t worry, Molly mine... I’ll sort him out.  We’ll see if the Virgin is bright enough to learn his lesson, hm?”

Just when he was starting to think Sherlock Holmes could be an interesting subject, he went and did something this unforgivably stupid.   _Blind blind blind..._

He would get his.  And Jim wouldn’t even need to lift a finger.

 

 

> ****x. Marigold (** **_Tagetes_ ** **); Despair, grief** **

It was over.  And Molly was alone.

Singular.

She could feel the ragged void in the world where her twin had been; a bloody socket that burned when she touched it.  Was this what people felt like, going through their lives with the knowledge that they were individual? That they had come into the world screaming and alone, and would end it the same way?

Because she _hadn’t_.  She had always been half of a whole, and now the other half was laying under a sheet in her morgue, and Molly was terrified to open the door.   

It was wrong.  He was supposed to have some miraculous, last minute escape.  He was supposed to change his mind, to realize that _winning this_ wasn’t as important as staying alive.  It was only the two of them left!

And now there was only her, and she was untethered.  Her DNA screaming in her cells, because they had never been meant to survive alone.  

Sherlock Holmes had walked away that afternoon, sliding out of sight; and Molly had helped him.  Had known from the moment the uncanny body struck the ground that there could be no other ending.  Nobody had ever been able to talk Jim out of anything.

He had chosen this.  

Had orchestrated everything to his design, and put the bullet through his own brain.  And they’d both lost, but they were too blinded by their own brilliance to see it. They’d strung each other out, and laid their plans and plots, treated the world like a game board and _lost._

With dry eyes, she pushed open the door to the morgue, feeling bare and exposed without the familiar weight of her lab coat around her shoulders.  Little Molly Hooper, hiding in plain sight with her mother’s name and her shared blood staining the roof of St. Bart’s black.

Molly, who’d lost them both because she couldn’t sacrifice one for the other.  And she couldn’t stop them.

As helpless in the face of her twin’s madness as he had been.  

And Molly didn’t know what he had been planning, or what had passed between them on the roof that afternoon.  But she had saved the voicemail that Jim had left her while he’d waited. A moment of lucidity against the background of his great game.

“Don’t worry, Molly my own.  It’ll all go as it should. I know he asked you for help.. Blind boy, can’t even see what’s right in front of his nose, can he?  But you’ll be safe. Couldn’t let anything happen to my own girl, could I?”

They would be the last words he’d ever say to her, and Molly had played the message over and over, until the cadence of the words and every lilting syllable was etched into her brain.  Her Jimmy, her--

“Molly?”

The only light in the corridor came from the emergency exit sign, casting a sickly orange-red glow that didn’t seem to illuminate much.  But there was no mistaking the tall, square shouldered form of Sebastian Moran, or the phantom weight that seemed lashed across his back.  In the dark she couldn’t see the outline of the gun at his thigh, hidden under the trailing edge of his coat. She didn’t have to see it to know it was there.

“Sebastian.. What is it?”

In the silence, Molly knew what he was going to say.  Jim was gone, and Sherlock Holmes was the wolf at the door, determined to unravel all of her brother’s creation.  But Sherlock had decided that she was invisible, and he would never suspect the woman that had helped him escape.

“There would have to be changes.  A lot of changes.” Molly said quietly, and turned away from the door she couldn’t bring herself to open.  It wasn’t Jim there, not anymore. His corpse wouldn’t giggle or tease; it was static, and hollow.

She knew what it would look like, and she didn’t need it to say goodbye.  

Sebastian nodded gravely.  “But you could fix it.”

And she could.

Sherlock Holmes would never suspect her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts! xoxo


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